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Telling a Better Story: How to Talk About God in a Skeptical Age
Christianity Today 2021 Book Award Apologetics & Evangelism
Telling a Better Story clears a path to a more effective, empathetic apologetics for today—both for experienced apologists and those new to sharing their faith with others.
Today's Christians often view the practice of defending their faith as pushy or unnecessary. Won't it just be taken for proselytizing? Don't many unbelievers find it offensive? Many Christians have shifted to a strategy of hoping that our lives will show Christ to our neighbors—and, while this is certainly good, it's no substitute to actively telling people about Christ.
In Telling a Better Story, author Joshua Chatraw presents a new and refreshing way to engage in apologetics that will help you tell the story of Christ in a holistic, culturally-contextual manner that—while being respectful—helps unbelievers imagine a more complete happiness and a better meaning to life.
Telling a Better Story will give you the tools
Understand the cultural stories that surround us.Recognize how these secular stories have shaped the way many people think.Learn how to tell God's story in a fresh way that allows today's younger generations to see it as a more meaningful and more hopeful story than the scripts around it.Finally, you'll also learn how to deal with the perennial issues and common objections to Christianity.
Telling a Better Story clears a path to a more effective, empathetic apologetics for today—both for experienced apologists and those new to sharing their faith with others.
Today's Christians often view the practice of defending their faith as pushy or unnecessary. Won't it just be taken for proselytizing? Don't many unbelievers find it offensive? Many Christians have shifted to a strategy of hoping that our lives will show Christ to our neighbors—and, while this is certainly good, it's no substitute to actively telling people about Christ.
In Telling a Better Story, author Joshua Chatraw presents a new and refreshing way to engage in apologetics that will help you tell the story of Christ in a holistic, culturally-contextual manner that—while being respectful—helps unbelievers imagine a more complete happiness and a better meaning to life.
Telling a Better Story will give you the tools
Understand the cultural stories that surround us.Recognize how these secular stories have shaped the way many people think.Learn how to tell God's story in a fresh way that allows today's younger generations to see it as a more meaningful and more hopeful story than the scripts around it.Finally, you'll also learn how to deal with the perennial issues and common objections to Christianity.
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Published June 30, 2020
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About the author
Joshua D. Chatraw
14 books23 followersAssociate Professor of Theology and Apologetics
Executive Director of The Center for Apologetics and Cultural Engagement
Executive Director of The Center for Apologetics and Cultural Engagement
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July 16, 2020
In an increasingly post-Christian America, apologetics — the defense of the Christian faith — is a necessary component of evangelism and discipleship. Christians need to “be prepared to give an answer [Greek, apología] to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have” (1 Peter 3:15). How they can do so well is the subject of Joshua D. Chatraw’s excellent new book, Telling a Better Story.
Apologetics has a bad rap in some quarters. Chatraw tells the story of a student at a Christian university who asked him, “What is your best argument for Christianity?” When Chatraw answered, “It depends on who I’m talking to and what the situation is,” the student seemed unimpressed. He was looking for a “knockout punch,” a “winner take all” argument. Here’s a pro tip: Those arguments are vanishingly rare, and anyway, what we want to win is a person, not a debate.
And then apologetics seems far removed from the concerns of everyday life. Chatraw describes the kind of apologetics in which many Bible-believing Christians were trained as “Building Block Apologetics.” The foundation of the pyramid is “universal logic,” rules of thinking that validate a “general theism,” on top of which is “historical evidence” for the Bible. The capstone is “the message of the gospel.” The problem with this kind of apologetics, which moves from the abstract to the concrete, is not that it’s false but that it’s irrelevant to most people. It answer questions they’re not asking and leaves little room for genuine conversation.
Rather than a “knockout punch” or a “rigid system,” Chatraw offers a “way” of doing apologetics that he calls “Inside Out Apologetics.” He explains, “The goal is for both sides to be willing to ‘try on the other story’ and see how it ‘fits’ rationally, psychologically, and experientially.” For the Christian, this involves internalizing certain questions and applying them prudently in conversations:
Inside:
* What can I affirm [in the other’s story], and what will I need to challenge?
* Where does this story lead, and is it internally consistent and livable.
Outside:
* Where do competing views borrow from the Christian story?
* How does the Christian narrative better address our experiences, observations, and history?
Chatraw cites Paul’s Areopagus speech as an example of an inside-out approach (Acts 17:22–31). Inside: “[Paul] quotes pagan sources and affirms where Athenian thinking is correct,” but he also “challenges their culture by using one of their own beliefs to demonstrate that God must be independent from his creation.” Outside: Paul invites the Athenians to view life through a Christ-centered lens: God “has set a day when he will judge the world with justice by the man he has appointed. He has given proof of this to everyone by raising him from the dead” (Acts 17:31).
If Acts 17:32 is any guide, inside-out conversations do not guarantee conversions, either for Paul or for us. They do lead to more productive conversations with those willing to invest the time, however. And that’s what apologetics-minded Christians should aim for.
The bulk of Telling a Better Story demonstrates how an inside-out approach might work in conversations about five common cultural assumptions in post-Christian America:
1. I don’t need God or religion.
2. You have to be true to yourself.
3. The ultimate goal of life is to be happy.
4. It’s okay to be spiritual, but not to say that your religion is the only way, or attempt to bring it into the public square.
5. We’ve progressed beyond faith and myths to reason and science.
I don’t know about you, but I see variations on these assumptions every day in my social media feed. These are the questions people are asking, and therefore the questions Christians need to be prepared to discuss.
Of course, once you commit to having a conversation with someone who does not share your Christian faith, you’re committing to hearing their pushback on that faith. Chatraw rounds out his book with three common objections to Christianity: it’s oppressive, unloving, and untrue. He concedes, rightly, that our skeptical friends sometimes have a point. Christians have not always acted Christianly: liberatingly, lovingly, rationally. But there are nonetheless reasons to believe, and to act on the belief, that the gospel is true.
Telling a Better Story concludes with a quote from Soren Kierkegaard: “Christ is the truth in the sense that to be the truth is the only true explanation of what truth is.” In post-Christian America, it is important that we Christians “speak the truth” as we answer the questions of our unbelieving neighbors. More importantly, however, we need to “embody the truth.” This, as Chatraw puts it, is the “greater apologetic.”
Book Reviewed
Joshua D. Chatraw, Telling a Better Story: How to Talk About God in a Skeptical Age (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2020).
P.S. If you liked my review, please click “Helpful” on my Amazon review page.
P.P.S. This review is cross-posted from InfluenceMagazine.com with permission.
Apologetics has a bad rap in some quarters. Chatraw tells the story of a student at a Christian university who asked him, “What is your best argument for Christianity?” When Chatraw answered, “It depends on who I’m talking to and what the situation is,” the student seemed unimpressed. He was looking for a “knockout punch,” a “winner take all” argument. Here’s a pro tip: Those arguments are vanishingly rare, and anyway, what we want to win is a person, not a debate.
And then apologetics seems far removed from the concerns of everyday life. Chatraw describes the kind of apologetics in which many Bible-believing Christians were trained as “Building Block Apologetics.” The foundation of the pyramid is “universal logic,” rules of thinking that validate a “general theism,” on top of which is “historical evidence” for the Bible. The capstone is “the message of the gospel.” The problem with this kind of apologetics, which moves from the abstract to the concrete, is not that it’s false but that it’s irrelevant to most people. It answer questions they’re not asking and leaves little room for genuine conversation.
Rather than a “knockout punch” or a “rigid system,” Chatraw offers a “way” of doing apologetics that he calls “Inside Out Apologetics.” He explains, “The goal is for both sides to be willing to ‘try on the other story’ and see how it ‘fits’ rationally, psychologically, and experientially.” For the Christian, this involves internalizing certain questions and applying them prudently in conversations:
Inside:
* What can I affirm [in the other’s story], and what will I need to challenge?
* Where does this story lead, and is it internally consistent and livable.
Outside:
* Where do competing views borrow from the Christian story?
* How does the Christian narrative better address our experiences, observations, and history?
Chatraw cites Paul’s Areopagus speech as an example of an inside-out approach (Acts 17:22–31). Inside: “[Paul] quotes pagan sources and affirms where Athenian thinking is correct,” but he also “challenges their culture by using one of their own beliefs to demonstrate that God must be independent from his creation.” Outside: Paul invites the Athenians to view life through a Christ-centered lens: God “has set a day when he will judge the world with justice by the man he has appointed. He has given proof of this to everyone by raising him from the dead” (Acts 17:31).
If Acts 17:32 is any guide, inside-out conversations do not guarantee conversions, either for Paul or for us. They do lead to more productive conversations with those willing to invest the time, however. And that’s what apologetics-minded Christians should aim for.
The bulk of Telling a Better Story demonstrates how an inside-out approach might work in conversations about five common cultural assumptions in post-Christian America:
1. I don’t need God or religion.
2. You have to be true to yourself.
3. The ultimate goal of life is to be happy.
4. It’s okay to be spiritual, but not to say that your religion is the only way, or attempt to bring it into the public square.
5. We’ve progressed beyond faith and myths to reason and science.
I don’t know about you, but I see variations on these assumptions every day in my social media feed. These are the questions people are asking, and therefore the questions Christians need to be prepared to discuss.
Of course, once you commit to having a conversation with someone who does not share your Christian faith, you’re committing to hearing their pushback on that faith. Chatraw rounds out his book with three common objections to Christianity: it’s oppressive, unloving, and untrue. He concedes, rightly, that our skeptical friends sometimes have a point. Christians have not always acted Christianly: liberatingly, lovingly, rationally. But there are nonetheless reasons to believe, and to act on the belief, that the gospel is true.
Telling a Better Story concludes with a quote from Soren Kierkegaard: “Christ is the truth in the sense that to be the truth is the only true explanation of what truth is.” In post-Christian America, it is important that we Christians “speak the truth” as we answer the questions of our unbelieving neighbors. More importantly, however, we need to “embody the truth.” This, as Chatraw puts it, is the “greater apologetic.”
Book Reviewed
Joshua D. Chatraw, Telling a Better Story: How to Talk About God in a Skeptical Age (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2020).
P.S. If you liked my review, please click “Helpful” on my Amazon review page.
P.P.S. This review is cross-posted from InfluenceMagazine.com with permission.
October 3, 2023
Greatest apologetic book I have ever read! (I have not read many lol). Seriously this book was absolutely fantastic, so many good things came from it. The thesis of the book can be wrapped up in this quote:
“Inside out apologetics is dependent upon gospelized imaginations, not primarily on technique. Rather than brute memorization of facts and figures, which are a google search away, apologetics wisdom is gained as we plant our lives within the community of faith living out the day in, day out story of the cross and resurrection”
The generation of our age are not going to come to faith because of logical argumentation only, but they will come to faith because Christ is the better story for our lives. I loved the approach, I loved the understanding Chatraw has of our cultural moment, and I loved the scholarship he included all while holding to the story of God told in Scripture. Very helpful to me! I referenced this book constantly in my apologetics class I was just in.
Definitely recommend!!
“Inside out apologetics is dependent upon gospelized imaginations, not primarily on technique. Rather than brute memorization of facts and figures, which are a google search away, apologetics wisdom is gained as we plant our lives within the community of faith living out the day in, day out story of the cross and resurrection”
The generation of our age are not going to come to faith because of logical argumentation only, but they will come to faith because Christ is the better story for our lives. I loved the approach, I loved the understanding Chatraw has of our cultural moment, and I loved the scholarship he included all while holding to the story of God told in Scripture. Very helpful to me! I referenced this book constantly in my apologetics class I was just in.
Definitely recommend!!
October 16, 2023
Definitely better than most books in the genre.
This isn’t really a book of Christian apologetic arguments so much as a book that shows how to develop an apologetic strategy— to demonstrate to others in our postmodern culture that Christianity presents a reasonable and appealing explanation for the way the world is, and the reasons why we have the feelings and intuitions that we do—such as our longings for love, meaning, justice, goodness, and beauty.
I highlighted quite a bit of this book. Here are just a couple passages:
Re the cop-out that is the multiverse theory:
“Alvin Plantinga’s analogy of an apparent cheater in the Wild West illustrates why such multi-universe theories shouldn’t placate this intuition of design.
‘I’m playing poker, and every time I deal, I get four aces and a wild card. The third time this happens, Tex jumps up, knocks over the table, draws his sixgun, and accuses me of cheating. My reply: “. . . have you considered the following? Possibly there is an infinite succession of universes, so that for any possible distribution of possible poker hands, there is a universe in which the possibility is realized; we just happen to find ourselves in one where someone like me always deals himself only aces and wild cards without ever cheating” . . . Tex probably won’t be satisfied; this multi-game hypothesis, even if true, is irrelevant.’”
Re people who die for their convictions:
“Virtually no one, friend or foe, believer or critic, denies that it was their convictions that they had seen the resurrected Jesus that caused the disciples’ radical transformations. They were willing to die specifically for their resurrection belief. Down through the centuries many have been willing to give their lives for political or religious causes. But the crucial difference here is that while many have died for their convictions, Jesus’ disciples were in the right place to know the truth or falsity of the event for which they were willing to die.”
This isn’t really a book of Christian apologetic arguments so much as a book that shows how to develop an apologetic strategy— to demonstrate to others in our postmodern culture that Christianity presents a reasonable and appealing explanation for the way the world is, and the reasons why we have the feelings and intuitions that we do—such as our longings for love, meaning, justice, goodness, and beauty.
I highlighted quite a bit of this book. Here are just a couple passages:
Re the cop-out that is the multiverse theory:
“Alvin Plantinga’s analogy of an apparent cheater in the Wild West illustrates why such multi-universe theories shouldn’t placate this intuition of design.
‘I’m playing poker, and every time I deal, I get four aces and a wild card. The third time this happens, Tex jumps up, knocks over the table, draws his sixgun, and accuses me of cheating. My reply: “. . . have you considered the following? Possibly there is an infinite succession of universes, so that for any possible distribution of possible poker hands, there is a universe in which the possibility is realized; we just happen to find ourselves in one where someone like me always deals himself only aces and wild cards without ever cheating” . . . Tex probably won’t be satisfied; this multi-game hypothesis, even if true, is irrelevant.’”
Re people who die for their convictions:
“Virtually no one, friend or foe, believer or critic, denies that it was their convictions that they had seen the resurrected Jesus that caused the disciples’ radical transformations. They were willing to die specifically for their resurrection belief. Down through the centuries many have been willing to give their lives for political or religious causes. But the crucial difference here is that while many have died for their convictions, Jesus’ disciples were in the right place to know the truth or falsity of the event for which they were willing to die.”
October 24, 2024
I loved it! I am so humbled & grateful that I get to learn from Dr. Chatraw in class! Encouraging and engaging, I would recommend!
Read
April 1, 2025Best book I've read on apologetics! (for a disclaimer I've read like 4)
May 20, 2023
Helpful book on apologetics. Read it for a class.
April 7, 2025
Chatraw's writing is compelling and practical. Any Christian passionate about evangelism should pick this book up to be a better "double-listener" of the culture around them. You will also have more tools to apply the gospel into conversations (in fresh ways too!)
Favorite quotes:
"Christianity has been transfused into the bloodstream of Western society. Though your secular friends may oppose Christianity, in many ways it is still pumping through their veins and directly linked to what they see as a healthy society. Your task is to help them see they are likely already personally borrowing from the Christian narrative and to wonder with them what might happen if Christianity–with its assumptions and ethics–were to be completely purged from our culture" (69).
"The answer to evil in the Christian story is found on the cross, where Jesus absorbed evil and suffered with us and for us. The cross is a just and loving God's way to pay for our evil without us paying for it ourselves. In the death of the only pure and innocent One, evil was sentenced" (116).
Favorite quotes:
"Christianity has been transfused into the bloodstream of Western society. Though your secular friends may oppose Christianity, in many ways it is still pumping through their veins and directly linked to what they see as a healthy society. Your task is to help them see they are likely already personally borrowing from the Christian narrative and to wonder with them what might happen if Christianity–with its assumptions and ethics–were to be completely purged from our culture" (69).
"The answer to evil in the Christian story is found on the cross, where Jesus absorbed evil and suffered with us and for us. The cross is a just and loving God's way to pay for our evil without us paying for it ourselves. In the death of the only pure and innocent One, evil was sentenced" (116).
November 30, 2023
A very insightful approach to apologetics. Chatraw calls for Christians to recognize the bigger picture when it comes to evaluating secular worldviews, recognizing that everyone holds viewpoints that fit into their broad "life story". Of course he posits that Christianity is the "best story", able to answer questions that all other worldviews fall short of in their attempts.
In some ways he treads common ground for those who have any background in Christian apologetics, but that does not mean it is the wrong ground to tread! Where Chatraw shines is in his focus on recognizing positive aspects to secular worldviews, to promote a posture of humility and willingness to listen to the other person. Finally, this book is a helpful resource for addressing the big-ticket issues while supplying footnotes with resources for your own further reading.
In some ways he treads common ground for those who have any background in Christian apologetics, but that does not mean it is the wrong ground to tread! Where Chatraw shines is in his focus on recognizing positive aspects to secular worldviews, to promote a posture of humility and willingness to listen to the other person. Finally, this book is a helpful resource for addressing the big-ticket issues while supplying footnotes with resources for your own further reading.
April 29, 2025
Wonderful book! This book (and the corresponding class) helped broaden my perspective of how I see the world, and therefore, how others may see the world on a fundamental level. This approach to evangelism and apologetics is very human considering the heart, mind, and body. Highly recommend especially if having “evangelistic” conversations tend to scare you, like they do me!
February 26, 2025
This for me, along with Glen Scrivener's Air We Breathe and Gavin Ortlund's Why God Makes Sense..., are the benchmark for recent apologetics books. Gently but surely dismantling other worldviews while presenting just how robust and appealing the Christian faith is.
June 15, 2025
Josh Chatraw has written a great little handbook on how to be an effective defender of the Christian faith in our current age. Twenty years from now, the questions will probably be different and another book will need to be written, but for right now, this is the one to read.
Chatraw begins by identifying some of the unique assumptions of our current age and makes the point that apologetics should not be viewed as an exercise in winning logical arguments, but entering into discussions with people to examine which metastory of reality is most coherent and most livable. "The human mind is a story processor, not a logic processor." (p.45). So how does the Christian story show how things fit together? That's the approach Chatraw takes.
Fact is, everyone lives in light of a cultural narrative that is informed by the advertisements, songs and movies we watch and think about. Often these stories are unexamined and uncriticized, but they inform the way we understand reality (what Charles Taylor calls our "social imaginary"). Our task as Christians is to challenge these narratives with another story, by "telling a better story," the Christian story.
The book then proceeds by using what Chatraw calls "inside out" apologetics, where we engage the grand story of unbelievers by stepping into their worldview (asking questions, listening, being patient) and then "stepping out" to show how Christianity offers better answers to such questions as: is God needed to find meaning in life? Isn't the main goal of life to be happy? It's OK to be spiritual, but shouldn't religion be kept private? Haven't reason and science shown that we have progressed beyond the need for religion?
Chatraw often makes profound observations about some of the big challenges to Christianity. For instance, the "problem of evil" is a frequently used argument against the existence of God, because the skeptic can't understand how a good God could allow such evil in the world. Chatraw points out that this was not normally used as a reason for disbelief in earlier societies (p.191), but because of current overconfidence in human reason, people arrogantly assume that if God had a good reason for allowing evil, we would certainly know what it is. But of course God has never promised this, and humble people understand they don't have a right to it. For now, the fact that God willingly suffered in the person of Jesus in order to overcome the powers of evil will have to be enough.
Chatraw also addresses the common unbelieving strategy of assigning one's own meaning to life in order to cope with the alleged hard cold reality of the meaninglessness of everything. Chatraw questions the effectiveness of this approach by asking how this can bring comfort if meaning and significance don't last beyond one's earthly existence. To this I can hear the unbelieving interlocutor simply saying, "why should I be concerned about the meaning of life in 500 years when I'm dead and buried?" Some better questions that I might ask the skeptic would be the following: 1) if you are OK with the supposed reality of a meaningless universe, then why do you feel the need to create personal meaning for yourself? Why do you not need macro-meaning but you insist on having micro-meaning? And, 2) what's the difference between creating imaginary meaning for your life personally and having an imaginary friend? In both cases, aren't you just living in a fantasy, make-believe world?
This book will stimulate these kinds of thoughts. Chatraw is thoughtful in his analysis, humble in his approach, contemporary in his application. This is an excellent resource for all Christians, apologists and church leaders.
Chatraw begins by identifying some of the unique assumptions of our current age and makes the point that apologetics should not be viewed as an exercise in winning logical arguments, but entering into discussions with people to examine which metastory of reality is most coherent and most livable. "The human mind is a story processor, not a logic processor." (p.45). So how does the Christian story show how things fit together? That's the approach Chatraw takes.
Fact is, everyone lives in light of a cultural narrative that is informed by the advertisements, songs and movies we watch and think about. Often these stories are unexamined and uncriticized, but they inform the way we understand reality (what Charles Taylor calls our "social imaginary"). Our task as Christians is to challenge these narratives with another story, by "telling a better story," the Christian story.
The book then proceeds by using what Chatraw calls "inside out" apologetics, where we engage the grand story of unbelievers by stepping into their worldview (asking questions, listening, being patient) and then "stepping out" to show how Christianity offers better answers to such questions as: is God needed to find meaning in life? Isn't the main goal of life to be happy? It's OK to be spiritual, but shouldn't religion be kept private? Haven't reason and science shown that we have progressed beyond the need for religion?
Chatraw often makes profound observations about some of the big challenges to Christianity. For instance, the "problem of evil" is a frequently used argument against the existence of God, because the skeptic can't understand how a good God could allow such evil in the world. Chatraw points out that this was not normally used as a reason for disbelief in earlier societies (p.191), but because of current overconfidence in human reason, people arrogantly assume that if God had a good reason for allowing evil, we would certainly know what it is. But of course God has never promised this, and humble people understand they don't have a right to it. For now, the fact that God willingly suffered in the person of Jesus in order to overcome the powers of evil will have to be enough.
Chatraw also addresses the common unbelieving strategy of assigning one's own meaning to life in order to cope with the alleged hard cold reality of the meaninglessness of everything. Chatraw questions the effectiveness of this approach by asking how this can bring comfort if meaning and significance don't last beyond one's earthly existence. To this I can hear the unbelieving interlocutor simply saying, "why should I be concerned about the meaning of life in 500 years when I'm dead and buried?" Some better questions that I might ask the skeptic would be the following: 1) if you are OK with the supposed reality of a meaningless universe, then why do you feel the need to create personal meaning for yourself? Why do you not need macro-meaning but you insist on having micro-meaning? And, 2) what's the difference between creating imaginary meaning for your life personally and having an imaginary friend? In both cases, aren't you just living in a fantasy, make-believe world?
This book will stimulate these kinds of thoughts. Chatraw is thoughtful in his analysis, humble in his approach, contemporary in his application. This is an excellent resource for all Christians, apologists and church leaders.
January 20, 2021
This book brought together a lot of thoughts I have had about doing apologetics in our modern age, but it does it much more coherently and eloquently than I have ever been able to formulate. Chatraw's argument is essentially that the gospel is a more fulfilling story than any metanarrative in the world from other religions or from a nonreligious perspective.
Therefore, he suggests utilizing "inside out" apologetics. By this, he means that it is necessary to first enter into someone's story to understand their perspective. We need to understand where someone is coming from before we have these conversations. Once we have done that, we have the opportunity to demonstrate how the Christian story provides a more fulfilling answer to whatever questions they might have. Although I do not believe the author said this explicitly in the text, he relies heavily on the assumption that all truth is God's truth. Therefore, we can affirm what is good in people's worldviews while also pointing into the reality that God's way is the better way.
This is an extraordinarily valuable work. This is very similar to the approach to apologetics that cultural apologists implement, and I think it is a model that can connect to the world we find ourselves in.
Therefore, he suggests utilizing "inside out" apologetics. By this, he means that it is necessary to first enter into someone's story to understand their perspective. We need to understand where someone is coming from before we have these conversations. Once we have done that, we have the opportunity to demonstrate how the Christian story provides a more fulfilling answer to whatever questions they might have. Although I do not believe the author said this explicitly in the text, he relies heavily on the assumption that all truth is God's truth. Therefore, we can affirm what is good in people's worldviews while also pointing into the reality that God's way is the better way.
This is an extraordinarily valuable work. This is very similar to the approach to apologetics that cultural apologists implement, and I think it is a model that can connect to the world we find ourselves in.
October 6, 2024
I was pleasantly surprised by this book. Apologetics is a sticky subject, but I think this book offers more than just a robust conversation surrounding the validity of Christian claims. It almost demands a respect of the individual, and an approach that focuses on living day in and day out in such a way that allows us to love our neighbors, seek justice and love mercy, and be a witness that is reliable.
It does not demand perfection, and is honest about the failings of the church, but still holds out a believable narrative that maybe we have lost in past years.
It does not demand perfection, and is honest about the failings of the church, but still holds out a believable narrative that maybe we have lost in past years.
July 21, 2021
Extremely helpful and readable exploration of modern apologetics! I really appreciated how thoughtfully and charitably Chatraw engaged various cultural narratives and his general methodology is compelling. Overall it led me to a deeper love and awe of the Christian story. This is a book I see myself coming back to frequently for reference!
April 5, 2024
Honestly, I was so excited for this book. The first chapter painted a picture of telling a story of truth that is better than the stories around us, or at least, is the source for them. However, the author didn’t seem to use much story in his writing. In fact, it’s sort of ended up becoming an apologetics book at the end. I wish he had had a co-author who could have given color to the book, using illustrations and stories to capture our hearts as well as our minds
December 13, 2020
(NOTE: I'm stingy with stars. For me 2 stars means a good book or a B. 3 stars means a very good book or a B+. 4 stars means an outstanding book or an A {only about 5% of the books I read merit 4 stars}. 5 stars means an all time favorite or an A+ {Only one of 400 or 500 books rates this!).
This book overlaps a lot with Chatraw’s Apologetics at the Cross. In one sense it is a more popular version of the material. There is much to commend here:
Pt 1 - A Better Story About Apologetics
1 - In Search of a Better Way
This book is about engaging the deepest aspirations of our secular friends and asking them to consider how the story of the gospel, as strange as may seem to them at first, just may lead them to what their heart has been looking for all along. (7)
Opponents of Christianity are no longer simply arguing that it is untrue or illogical, but also that it’s dangerously oppressive. Many of the ethical commands of Christianity and the concept of divine judgment fly in the face of the prevailing norms of our culture. These kinds of moral issues are the chief apologetic challenge of our age. (11)
Central to our task, then, is learning how to help others see the splendor of God and his purposes by reimagining the world through the Christian story. (11)
2 - The Story Lives On
Humans continually tell, think about, and define ourselves by stories because that’s exactly what we were designed to do. (18)
The need of the hour is a mature apologetics that is historically informed and theologically rooted in the gospel itself. This will require not only knowing how to give reasons for our faith, but also knowing how to stoke imaginations, model cruciform lives, and publicly confess both our own personal shortcomings and the failures of the church throughout history. (We do, after all, have some planks to remove from our own eyes.) This isn’t typically what many people think when they hear the word apologetics, but that is only because we as the church have not fully come to grips with our past—both the wisdom it has to offer us and the mistakes we’ve made along the way. (19)
Once viewed as a tool to win debates, apologetics is now becoming more focused on generating productive conversations that open doors for people to consider the gospel. (19)
Above all, what we need is an apologetics approach that is intentionally shaped by the cross. Cruciform apologists listen to and care for others; their goal is not simply to “win” an argument but to truly help those they speak with—to demonstrate Christ’s love for them and invite them to try on the gospel. … This is an apologetics that depends as much on being the right type of person as it does on having the right arguments.26 The goal is to embody the truth and beauty of the gospel—the ultimate aim of any truly Christian apologetics. (20-21)
1. The Grand Story Lines
The pessimistic secular story. According to this story, the universe came into existence through a “big bang” billions of years ago with no divine cause or purpose for future inhabitants. Eventually, in one small corner of an immense universe, on the planet we call Earth, life began to emerge from chemicals. After a long unguided evolutionary history, billions of years in the making, which was characterized by natural selection and the “survival of the fittest,” homo sapiens eventually emerged. (57)
A truly unflinching commitment to follow this story to its end leads the pessimistic secular to conclude that human life has no ultimate significance. There is no cosmic order, no ethical order outside of our subjective preferences, no universal moral obligations, and even, many would maintain, no true free will—our actions are simply a product of our physical makeup and external stimuli. Reason leads to a grim reality: humanity will go extinct, and the solar system itself will as well. Everything eventually will run out of energy. No one will be alive to even remember human history; ultimately it will not matter that we ever existed. (58)
The optimistic secular story. Much like the pessimistic secular account, this story begins with the beginning of the universe emerging out of natural causes. Eventually, against all odds, the physical conditions on a particular planet emerged as suitable for the beginning of life, and after a long unguided evolutionary process that favored the survival of the strong, the human species eventually emerged. For most of human history, our ancestors explained the world by appealing to a divine order, assuming an “enchanted” existence, and looking to an otherworldly existence after death. Like its secular counterpart, this more optimistic story finds its climatic turning point in Western Europe around the eighteenth century. …
Unlike its secular counterpart, which sees a godless world as a cold reality that the heroic grimly faces, this is an exhilarating story of liberation. Having escaped outdated, mythological conceptions of the world that were accompanied by stifling authoritarian dogma, we can now, individually and collectively, make our own meaning and set our own course. As rational beings set free from our cultural captivity to religion, we can now rise above the evolutionary forces of individual and tribal survival for the purpose of human flourishing—maximizing pleasure and minimizing pain, treating all people with dignity, creating systems for equal treatment for all, and taking personal responsibility to care for the earth and make it a better place. Yes, we will all one day die, but through no doing of our own and no plan of a divine being, we now find ourselves not only as actors in the story but as authors with the freedom to write the story for ourselves and to pursue meaning and happiness on our own terms. (58-59)
The story of pluralistic and moral therapeutic spirituality. Though frequently under the guise of Christianity, this story is distinct from Christianity and the previous two secular stories. While not necessarily discounting the current secular models for the emergence of life, God—or at least some kind of divine force—is still seen as essential. God gives life meaning, morality, and significance. However, neither God, morality, nor our purpose is found by looking outside of ourselves to a divinely given order or traditional religious authority—such as written revelation or a religious institution…. Ultimately, we are to look inside of ourselves to listen to the unique human (or divine) spark within us and live
authentic lives. God exists to help us find our true potential, feel better about ourselves, and guide us to treat others with dignity and respect. Diverse religious expressions, in their ideal forms, help us discover an inner peace and a love that makes the world a better place. (59)
The three stories below aren’t so much metanarratives that explain human origins or questions of the divine, but accounts that enter our lives and end up taking priority—they set the direction of life, even if most people aren’t fully conscious of the script they are following. (59-60)
2. The Micro-Stories
The story of consumerism. Bombarded by ads, movies, and media, the default story sold to us from an early age is that the good life comes with a price tag. Built into the million-dollar ad campaigns that constantly flash across our eyes is the recognition that humans will pursue meaning—the golden ticket is to convince us that we can find it in what they are selling. (60)
The story of achievement. “You are what you accomplish.” (60).
The story of romance. Our loneliness, our insatiable desire to love and be loved, can
be satisfied if we just find our “soul mate.” Modern movies and songs, from Beauty and the Beast to Taylor Swift’s “Lover,” script for us the search for true love’s kiss, with redemptive, yes even, salvific, hopes. If I can just find the “one,” it will be heaven on earth—happily ever after. (60)
3. Having a Plan - Taken Captive By the Right Story
In various ways, the macro- and micro-stories haven taken us all captive. Contrasting the Christian story with these rival narratives sobers us to the way we are actually living despite what we confess. To counter these stories, we must embed our lives in the true story. … Constantly comparing the rival stories to God’s story is essential to not being lulled to sleep in a secular age.
Thus, learning to view all of life through the lens of the gospel is essential for discipleship. … How do you become effective at talking about God in a skeptical age? Steep your life in the gospel story. Learn to see everything by way of the story. Study to see where the story of Christ challenges and overlaps with the dominant assumptions of culture around. By taking every thought captive to Christ and his story, you will grow closer to God, but you will also become the right type of person (61)
The Christian story is centered around a triune God. As an outpouring of his love, God created everything in the universe good. … As God’s creatures, we have been created with inherit value, meaning, and purpose. As his image bearers, humans are made for a relationship with God, to love others, and to care for creation. And yet something has gone deeply wrong.
Endowed with the sense of moral obligation, the capacity for creative brilliance, and the desire for deep interpersonal relationships, humans were given the freedom to choose. Our problem is that we, quite absurdly, used our God given abilities to run from God. The result is a disordered world where we love things in the wrong order—we worship ourselves and the world around us rather than the Creator. (61-62)
The good news is not a series of abstract beliefs or an ideology or a list of rules to follow to be “good” people. While other religious “solutions” claim to offer salvation through obedience to a great prophet or a spiritual guru, the Christian story hinges on an event. The good news is a person. God himself entered our world as a man, offering forgiveness that transforms the broken and turns rebels into sons and daughters. … While we ran away, Jesus came running to us with the Father’s love. The good news is grace. (62)
Jesus’ resurrection is the climactic event that proclaims to the world that God has conquered death. He is renewing the world. The disordered and broken world will ultimately be made right. Evil will be banished. The resurrection is the beginning of the great renewal. (63)
4. “Inside Out” Apologetics
we now turn to “inside out” apologetics. “Inside out” begins by entering a person’s social imagination and engaging their ideas from within it. This is critical. … we need to learn to step into their story before pointing them to the way out. Someone who has assumed the “givens” of late modernism brings deeply rooted assumptions, and they won’t flippantly discard these assumptions in favor of the Bible or Christianity. We must then engage their story to tug at their assumptions and invite them to consider the Christian story. (63)
In contrast to the way the building block model places the gospel at the end of interactions, “inside out” insists that the gospel be woven into the discourse, thus making it the thematic center of how we engage. … this approach also emphasizes the importance of listening to understand the other person’s view so we can see where their framework may have internal inconsistences and fail to make good sense of our human experience. (64)
The goal is for both sides to be willing to “try on the other story” and see how it “fits” rationally, psychologically, and experientially. This will mean, instead of hiding our theological convictions, after inhabiting the other person’s perspective we will ask the person to consider how Christianity’s mega-story, along with all the Bible’s little stories, better explains the world around us. (64)
This book overlaps a lot with Chatraw’s Apologetics at the Cross. In one sense it is a more popular version of the material. There is much to commend here:
Pt 1 - A Better Story About Apologetics
1 - In Search of a Better Way
This book is about engaging the deepest aspirations of our secular friends and asking them to consider how the story of the gospel, as strange as may seem to them at first, just may lead them to what their heart has been looking for all along. (7)
Opponents of Christianity are no longer simply arguing that it is untrue or illogical, but also that it’s dangerously oppressive. Many of the ethical commands of Christianity and the concept of divine judgment fly in the face of the prevailing norms of our culture. These kinds of moral issues are the chief apologetic challenge of our age. (11)
Central to our task, then, is learning how to help others see the splendor of God and his purposes by reimagining the world through the Christian story. (11)
2 - The Story Lives On
Humans continually tell, think about, and define ourselves by stories because that’s exactly what we were designed to do. (18)
The need of the hour is a mature apologetics that is historically informed and theologically rooted in the gospel itself. This will require not only knowing how to give reasons for our faith, but also knowing how to stoke imaginations, model cruciform lives, and publicly confess both our own personal shortcomings and the failures of the church throughout history. (We do, after all, have some planks to remove from our own eyes.) This isn’t typically what many people think when they hear the word apologetics, but that is only because we as the church have not fully come to grips with our past—both the wisdom it has to offer us and the mistakes we’ve made along the way. (19)
Once viewed as a tool to win debates, apologetics is now becoming more focused on generating productive conversations that open doors for people to consider the gospel. (19)
Above all, what we need is an apologetics approach that is intentionally shaped by the cross. Cruciform apologists listen to and care for others; their goal is not simply to “win” an argument but to truly help those they speak with—to demonstrate Christ’s love for them and invite them to try on the gospel. … This is an apologetics that depends as much on being the right type of person as it does on having the right arguments.26 The goal is to embody the truth and beauty of the gospel—the ultimate aim of any truly Christian apologetics. (20-21)
1. The Grand Story Lines
The pessimistic secular story. According to this story, the universe came into existence through a “big bang” billions of years ago with no divine cause or purpose for future inhabitants. Eventually, in one small corner of an immense universe, on the planet we call Earth, life began to emerge from chemicals. After a long unguided evolutionary history, billions of years in the making, which was characterized by natural selection and the “survival of the fittest,” homo sapiens eventually emerged. (57)
A truly unflinching commitment to follow this story to its end leads the pessimistic secular to conclude that human life has no ultimate significance. There is no cosmic order, no ethical order outside of our subjective preferences, no universal moral obligations, and even, many would maintain, no true free will—our actions are simply a product of our physical makeup and external stimuli. Reason leads to a grim reality: humanity will go extinct, and the solar system itself will as well. Everything eventually will run out of energy. No one will be alive to even remember human history; ultimately it will not matter that we ever existed. (58)
The optimistic secular story. Much like the pessimistic secular account, this story begins with the beginning of the universe emerging out of natural causes. Eventually, against all odds, the physical conditions on a particular planet emerged as suitable for the beginning of life, and after a long unguided evolutionary process that favored the survival of the strong, the human species eventually emerged. For most of human history, our ancestors explained the world by appealing to a divine order, assuming an “enchanted” existence, and looking to an otherworldly existence after death. Like its secular counterpart, this more optimistic story finds its climatic turning point in Western Europe around the eighteenth century. …
Unlike its secular counterpart, which sees a godless world as a cold reality that the heroic grimly faces, this is an exhilarating story of liberation. Having escaped outdated, mythological conceptions of the world that were accompanied by stifling authoritarian dogma, we can now, individually and collectively, make our own meaning and set our own course. As rational beings set free from our cultural captivity to religion, we can now rise above the evolutionary forces of individual and tribal survival for the purpose of human flourishing—maximizing pleasure and minimizing pain, treating all people with dignity, creating systems for equal treatment for all, and taking personal responsibility to care for the earth and make it a better place. Yes, we will all one day die, but through no doing of our own and no plan of a divine being, we now find ourselves not only as actors in the story but as authors with the freedom to write the story for ourselves and to pursue meaning and happiness on our own terms. (58-59)
The story of pluralistic and moral therapeutic spirituality. Though frequently under the guise of Christianity, this story is distinct from Christianity and the previous two secular stories. While not necessarily discounting the current secular models for the emergence of life, God—or at least some kind of divine force—is still seen as essential. God gives life meaning, morality, and significance. However, neither God, morality, nor our purpose is found by looking outside of ourselves to a divinely given order or traditional religious authority—such as written revelation or a religious institution…. Ultimately, we are to look inside of ourselves to listen to the unique human (or divine) spark within us and live
authentic lives. God exists to help us find our true potential, feel better about ourselves, and guide us to treat others with dignity and respect. Diverse religious expressions, in their ideal forms, help us discover an inner peace and a love that makes the world a better place. (59)
The three stories below aren’t so much metanarratives that explain human origins or questions of the divine, but accounts that enter our lives and end up taking priority—they set the direction of life, even if most people aren’t fully conscious of the script they are following. (59-60)
2. The Micro-Stories
The story of consumerism. Bombarded by ads, movies, and media, the default story sold to us from an early age is that the good life comes with a price tag. Built into the million-dollar ad campaigns that constantly flash across our eyes is the recognition that humans will pursue meaning—the golden ticket is to convince us that we can find it in what they are selling. (60)
The story of achievement. “You are what you accomplish.” (60).
The story of romance. Our loneliness, our insatiable desire to love and be loved, can
be satisfied if we just find our “soul mate.” Modern movies and songs, from Beauty and the Beast to Taylor Swift’s “Lover,” script for us the search for true love’s kiss, with redemptive, yes even, salvific, hopes. If I can just find the “one,” it will be heaven on earth—happily ever after. (60)
3. Having a Plan - Taken Captive By the Right Story
In various ways, the macro- and micro-stories haven taken us all captive. Contrasting the Christian story with these rival narratives sobers us to the way we are actually living despite what we confess. To counter these stories, we must embed our lives in the true story. … Constantly comparing the rival stories to God’s story is essential to not being lulled to sleep in a secular age.
Thus, learning to view all of life through the lens of the gospel is essential for discipleship. … How do you become effective at talking about God in a skeptical age? Steep your life in the gospel story. Learn to see everything by way of the story. Study to see where the story of Christ challenges and overlaps with the dominant assumptions of culture around. By taking every thought captive to Christ and his story, you will grow closer to God, but you will also become the right type of person (61)
The Christian story is centered around a triune God. As an outpouring of his love, God created everything in the universe good. … As God’s creatures, we have been created with inherit value, meaning, and purpose. As his image bearers, humans are made for a relationship with God, to love others, and to care for creation. And yet something has gone deeply wrong.
Endowed with the sense of moral obligation, the capacity for creative brilliance, and the desire for deep interpersonal relationships, humans were given the freedom to choose. Our problem is that we, quite absurdly, used our God given abilities to run from God. The result is a disordered world where we love things in the wrong order—we worship ourselves and the world around us rather than the Creator. (61-62)
The good news is not a series of abstract beliefs or an ideology or a list of rules to follow to be “good” people. While other religious “solutions” claim to offer salvation through obedience to a great prophet or a spiritual guru, the Christian story hinges on an event. The good news is a person. God himself entered our world as a man, offering forgiveness that transforms the broken and turns rebels into sons and daughters. … While we ran away, Jesus came running to us with the Father’s love. The good news is grace. (62)
Jesus’ resurrection is the climactic event that proclaims to the world that God has conquered death. He is renewing the world. The disordered and broken world will ultimately be made right. Evil will be banished. The resurrection is the beginning of the great renewal. (63)
4. “Inside Out” Apologetics
we now turn to “inside out” apologetics. “Inside out” begins by entering a person’s social imagination and engaging their ideas from within it. This is critical. … we need to learn to step into their story before pointing them to the way out. Someone who has assumed the “givens” of late modernism brings deeply rooted assumptions, and they won’t flippantly discard these assumptions in favor of the Bible or Christianity. We must then engage their story to tug at their assumptions and invite them to consider the Christian story. (63)
In contrast to the way the building block model places the gospel at the end of interactions, “inside out” insists that the gospel be woven into the discourse, thus making it the thematic center of how we engage. … this approach also emphasizes the importance of listening to understand the other person’s view so we can see where their framework may have internal inconsistences and fail to make good sense of our human experience. (64)
The goal is for both sides to be willing to “try on the other story” and see how it “fits” rationally, psychologically, and experientially. This will mean, instead of hiding our theological convictions, after inhabiting the other person’s perspective we will ask the person to consider how Christianity’s mega-story, along with all the Bible’s little stories, better explains the world around us. (64)
February 26, 2023
A helpful book for engaging in the reasonableness of Christian faith. It’s really helpful to put names to popular beliefs (living your truth, all religions are leading to the same place, I believe in science, and so on). Really helped me know how to ask the right questions. I hope it leads to good conversations (over coffee of course!)
November 8, 2024
This is one of those books where a ".5" option would be great, because I think this book deserves something in the "north of 3.5" range. There's much to commend in Chatraw's approach, though I couldn't help but experience frustration with an in-depth apologetic approach largely distanced from discussions of ecclesiology. I recognize that this may have been, in some senses, outside the scope of Chatraw's emphases, yet I can't shake the fact that the places where apologetics have historically gone haywire (even and perhaps especially in the modes Chatraw is trying to correct) have been where they have been divorced from the life of the local church.
February 18, 2021
Good read, in the same vein as Making Sense of God (Keller), Desiring the Kingdom (Smith), A Restless Age (Gohn), and other Reformed, Augustinian, Christianity-speaks-to-the-deepest-longings-of-the-human-heart driven works
April 23, 2024
I read this as part of a short course on apologetics with a group of other people. It was really good albeit a bit intellectually heavy. Apologetics are an important part of the Christian faith and being able to learn about it together with a community was really helpful, encouraging, and insightful. I really liked how the Joshua Chatraw painted apologetics in a different light than the debate, prove them wrong, argument connotation it normally has. He talks about telling a better story, focusing on the positive impacts of the Christian tradition rather than the negatives of someone else’s views as a way to share the gospel with people. He shares about the art of entering into other’s stories in order to share a better story. This was a really good book and I recommend for any Christian interested in apologetics.
May 29, 2024
Good book for teaching Christians how to approach apologetics. While the title is called “Telling a Better Story”, there is little actual storytelling in the book. That, and it leans more toward theory than lived examples. As this is intended to be the layperson version of his textbook “Apologetics at the Cross” I think more stories and lived examples would help grow people’s imaginations for this type of apologetic witness. That said, the approach itself is great. It’s sound, realistic, accessible, kind, culturally relevant, and holistic. The combativeness of much apologetic work has tainted the discipline in many Christians eyes. This book contributes to a much needed course correction for apologetics as a discipline.
April 27, 2021
Chatraw, gives a different way of sharing the story of the gospel in this book, that is a very useful tool.The first couple of chapters I felt dragged a bit for him to finally get to the point. However the last 4 chapters were excellent. How do you better understanding where people are coming from? Their backgrounds, experiences and lifestyle all play huge key into sharing the gospel... in the story (The gospel) that can be reflective in their own life. That forgiveness, self-sacrifice, mercy and Justice, all coincide together. Might read again because there is much I wish to break down and digest after reading this book.
September 18, 2023
Took me forever to finish this once the semester started. Really enjoyed the first half or so more than the end. Saw a lot of RUF’s philosophy of ministry in here which was awesome to think about while doing the internship. This book really focuses on treating people as individuals and hearing their stories in order to talk to them about the gospel. It’s a lot harder and takes more time to not approach evangelism in a cookie cutter way but I think treating people as individuals is more loving and will help people see how the gospel applies to their own life.
May 9, 2023
Not gonna lie I was predisposed to dislike this book because I’m sad about my boy Galvin not getting hired at Beeson, but it was very very good! This was the best cultural apologetics book I have read. I think if someone were to ask what cultural apologetics was they could read this book and adequately understand it!
If you want to understand a more conversational style of sharing the gospel that focuses on listening, rather than point based traditional apologetics, you should really pick up this book! Very accessible!
If you want to understand a more conversational style of sharing the gospel that focuses on listening, rather than point based traditional apologetics, you should really pick up this book! Very accessible!
November 8, 2024
This book was very hard to get through.
I appreciated the inside out approach of apologetics that was talked about-forming relationships with non believers, asking them questions, and having real conversations to get the core of their unbelief. It was also solid in theology!
But I found the book to be hard to read. There were really long, complex sentences. I also didn’t expect this book to be as heavily apologetic as it was. I may just not be the target audience & that’s okay.
I appreciated the inside out approach of apologetics that was talked about-forming relationships with non believers, asking them questions, and having real conversations to get the core of their unbelief. It was also solid in theology!
But I found the book to be hard to read. There were really long, complex sentences. I also didn’t expect this book to be as heavily apologetic as it was. I may just not be the target audience & that’s okay.
May 2, 2022
A terrific book grounded in the story of the Bible. Chatraw's "inside-out" approach to apologetics is winsome and entirely applicable in our post-modern world. Grounding apologetics (and all disciplines, for that matter) in the story of the Bible is vital to presenting a compelling reason for skeptics to try on the Christian worldview for themselves. Highly recommend.
August 15, 2022
It’s a good book with some good lines and some good thoughts.
It was a bold move putting Olaf the Snowman in dialogue and it’s Alister McGrath and Charles Taylor, but somehow, Chatraw pulled it off.
As someone who primarily reads missiology, it struck me while reading this how infrequently missiologists write about apologetics.
And it struck me that perhaps Chatraw is an apologist who realized this from the other side and is trying to bridge the gap.
It was a bold move putting Olaf the Snowman in dialogue and it’s Alister McGrath and Charles Taylor, but somehow, Chatraw pulled it off.
As someone who primarily reads missiology, it struck me while reading this how infrequently missiologists write about apologetics.
And it struck me that perhaps Chatraw is an apologist who realized this from the other side and is trying to bridge the gap.
June 22, 2022
I had to read this for an Apologetics class & it was great. A little dense, but a good resource on how to have conversations about God today. It’s very relationally driven & also provides evidence. Good read!
September 1, 2022
One of the best books discussing the need for cultural relevancy in our evangelism.
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